Archive for June, 2005

Smart tagging available in The Open Source Zone

Published by ugo on June 10, 2005 in opensource. 1 Comment

I’ve just finished implementing a cool new feature in The Open Source Zone. Tagging a project now presents a user interface similar to the new del.icio.us one. Click on the image below to see a screenshot.

screenshot

This works by parsing the description of the project and looking for words that have already been used as tags before. It still lacks a little polishing: you can select the same tag more than once, for instance, even though it will only be stored once, so it’s more of an issue of UI consistency than of data integrity.

I think it’s a nice improvement over the previous version, where you had no help in selecting tags. I’m currently working on providing a better user experience as I think this is one of the keys to getting more users involved. Next, I’ll attack the interface for selecting similar projects.

Italian Education Minister: “I’m too dumb to vote.”

Published by ugo on June 9, 2005 in miscellaneous and skeptic. 1 Comment

moratti_letizia.jpgProbably nobody out of this little corner of the world knows that this weekend a referendum will be held on a handful of controversial matter: artificial fecundation, embryo handling, stem-cell research. The referendum is meant to abrogate some quite restrictive articles from a recent law that was passed by a right-wing, mostly catholic parliamentary majority. It’s not a mystery that the Catholic Church vehemently pushed for the adoption of a law like the one under discussion.

You might also not be aware of the fact that Italian law stipulates that a referendum is not considered valid unless more than half of the voters turn out at the polls. In other words, assuming there are 40 million people having the right to vote, but just 20 million or less do actually vote, it does not matter if 100% of them vote “yes”, they lose.

Since voter turnaround is typically quite low at referendums, most catholic organizations — including the Vatican, which is formally a foreign state and should just shut the fuck up — are not campaigning for a “no” vote but are instead encouraging voters to stay at home, hoping to invalidate the poll with such a tactic.

Well, since that is what the Constitution of the Republic says, it’s a perfectly legitimate tactic. No point arguing about that.

What I cannot stand, however, is hypocrisy. Like when the Italian Education Minister, Mrs. Letizia Moratti, declares that “the matter is too complex” and should be left to the Parliament. Oh come on, who are you trying to fool? Everybody knows it’s just an instrumental statement, i.e. a lie.

Or are we expected to believe that the Minister thinks she’s dumb to the point of not being able to discern what’s right and what’s wrong? What’s worse? Having a liar as Minister or a dumbass?

Besides, it’s the Parliament who voted the law in the first place and if the majority of citizens vote for its abrogation, what we are saying is that the matter is too complex to be left to a handful of politicians, who got it wrong the first time.

The Open Source Zone - Tech writeup

Published by ugo on June 9, 2005 in cocoon, java, opensource and web. 0 Comments

oszone-beta.gifThe Open Source Zone is a web application that exploits a large number of Open Source libraries, frameworks and services, namely:

It would have been impossible to create The Open Source Zone in such a short amount of time if all this great code had not been contributed to the Open Source community. Our most sincere thanks go to the people who created these packages.

The heart of the system is a Java web application whose main building blocks are:

The Spring Framework, a powerful container based on dependency injection, which is used to configure and bring together the services provided by the other components, most notably Hibernate and Lucene.

Hibernate, an object-relational mapping (ORM) framework which guarantees the persistence of Java objects by abstracting away the relational model of the underlying database and hiding the complexities of JDBC programming.

Apache Lucene, which is used to provide indexing and search services.

Apache Cocoon, a powerful, XML-based web application framework, which implements the presentation layer and manages the flow of user interactions using an innovative continuations-based approach.

Spring, Hibernate, Lucene and Cocoon, together with the PostgreSQL JDBC driver are hosted inside the Jetty servlet container.

Storage of data is guaranteed by the PostgreSQL Relational DataBase Management System (RDBMS). The interface between the Java application and the RDBMS is managed by the PostgreSQL JDBC driver.

The Apache HTTPD 2.0 server is placed in front of the Jetty Servlet container as a caching proxy, using the mod_proxy and mod_cache modules. This solution provides the following benefits:

  • Static resources (images, CSS stylesheets, Javascript files) are served directly by Apache HTTPD and don’t cause unnecessary load on the Servlet container.
  • Infrequently changing data can be cached and served directly by Apache HTTPD without forwarding requests to the Java application and to the database, thus ensuring larger scalability in case of numerous concurrent requests.
  • When the Java application must be taken down for maintenance and upgrades, Apache HTTPD can show a warning page, informing users of the downtime and avoiding the dreaded “Connection refused” message.

Load balancing and clustering could be implemented in the future, simply by having one HTTPD server forwarding requests to more than one Java application server.

The exact configuration of Apache mod_proxy and mod_cache is similar to the one used by Pier and described in this wiki entry.

The Mirra Chair

Published by ugo on June 7, 2005 in personal. 6 Comments

P_MIR_L038.jpg

Alright, now that I’ve settled on the iMac for my desktop system, it’s time to think about the furniture of my new home office. Priority #1: The chair. As I was in Milan this afternoon and had a couple of hours to spend, I looked up the address of the local Herman Miller dealer and payed them a visit.

By the way, I hope to help them with their ridiculous Google ranking (which is to be expected, given a Flash-only website, what nonsense!) by giving them a link. Will I get a bigger discount after this? I don’t think so, but it’s worth trying ;).

Amenities aside, I did a brief test of the Aeron and Mirra chairs and what can I say? I’m hooked! I don’t want anything else now. I will probably buy a Mirra, especially after having read this review at Pixelsurgeon. Compared to the Aeron, if offers less choices of size and finish, but is much cheaper and equally comfortable.

I also learned that Herman Miller manufactures a number of very nice furniture pieces, so I’m going to peruse the catalogs a bit and then ask the dealer for an offer for the furnishing of the whole office, hoping to get more favorable terms this way.


Say Hello to WebKit!

Published by ugo on June 7, 2005 in opensource. 0 Comments

Surfin’ Safari: “As some of you may have heard at WWDC Monday, the Safari team is proud to announce that we are making significant changes in the way we operate, and these changes start today.”

Captured!

Apple switching to Intel: Should I buy an iMac now?

Published by ugo on June 6, 2005 in apple. 7 Comments

IntelInsideLogo.gifAs I wrote a little more than one month ago, I am considering buying a new development machine. Well no, actually I desperately need a new development machine soon.

Until today, my choice was firmly in the Apple camp, a 20″ iMac G5 to be precise. However, given today’s announcement, I think I need to review all the options again.

Here are some starting points:

  1. Price is not a problem.
  2. I have a distinct preference for OS X, but I could live with Linux. Windows is absolutely out of the question, though.
  3. I don’t have a monitor and a 19″ LCD model is the absolute minimum, so consider the price of it before saying that an Intel box is way cheaper.

imac20050503.gifEverything considered, I still think a Mac is the best choice. I expect the first Intel Macs to be laptops, since it is in this market segment that Apple is currently lagging behind in performance. A G5 is a cool-ass CPU and it will still be in two years from now. At that time, my iMac will have largely repayed itself and I could consider switching to a new Intel-based model, should the need arise.

The biggest doubt, however, is the following: will Apple still be around in two years, or will it fold when investors start selling Apple stock by the truckloads? I’m betting on the former, but I’m not qualified enough to judge.

Anyway, I’ll give you the option to make me change my mind, if you think I’m heading in the wrong direction. I’ve put up a poll in the sidebar (link) and you can also leave a comment.

But whatever happens, please Mr. Jobs, no “Intel Inside” stickers, OK?

Update: a pertinent quote from Dave Winer: “People who worry about an Osborne effect worry for naught.” Alright, since also 11 out of 12 participants to the poll seem to agree, and since I just got a nice offer for a discounted (79€ + VAT) 512MB memory expansion from a nearby shop, then I’m going to buy the iMac.


Opinion Poll: WWDC Keynote

Published by ugo on June 6, 2005 in apple. 0 Comments

Since the Web is abuzz with rumors about the supposedly upcoming announcement by Steve Jobs at the WWDC concerning a partnership with Intel, I thought I might do a little opinion poll on the matter.

So I took the occasion to install GaMerZ Polls plugin for WordPress and start a poll on the gist of the last decade’s most anticipated WWDC keynote.

Click here and place your vote. You have until 10:00AM PST!

Skype envy

Published by ugo on June 6, 2005 in apple and voip. 0 Comments


If you can stand the dreadful Thai pop muzak, take a look at this video. I do have a Powerbook and I do use Skype. The only thing I miss is skyping some beautiful girl while reclined on an armchair on a gorgeous Thai beach.

skype_musicvideo_2.png

(Via Share Skype).

The Open Source Zone: Day 2

Published by ugo on June 4, 2005 in opensource. 1 Comment

oszone-beta.gifAfter yesterday’s announcement, things are going really smooth. We added a bunch of projects and had some external submissions as well. I’d just like to invite people to be accurate when submitting a new item: Java is not the same as C++ and please write down a brief description for each new item. Copying an excerpt from a project’s website is OK, as long as you link to it.

If you don’t feel like contributing, please link to it. We badly need some traffic to test how it all behaves under stress.

We also released a couple bugfixes, but overall the application is behaving surprisingly well. Having few bugs to fix means I’ll have more time to develop new features or polish the UI.

See you on The Open Source Zone!

Ten Most Harmful Books … says who?

Published by ugo on June 3, 2005 in miscellaneous. 0 Comments

darwin.gifI don’t have any particular fondness for “The Communist Manifesto” or “Mein Kampf”, but putting “The Kinsey Report”, “Introduction to Psychoanalisis” and particularly “The Origin of Species” in the list of the most harmful books of the 19th and 20th century smacks of ignorance and placing ideology above science.

Charles Darwin has the dubious honor of being cited twice in the above mentioned list (once for “The Origin of Species” and once for “Descent of man”). Those stupid American right-wing, Christian fundamentalists still cannot reconcile the theory of evolution with their faith. Asshats.

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries: “HUMAN EVENTS asked a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to help us compile a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Each panelist nominated a number of titles and then voted on a ballot including all books nominated. A title received a score of 10 points for being listed No. 1 by one of our panelists, 9 points for being listed No. 2, etc. Appropriately, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, earned the highest aggregate score and the No. 1 listing.”

The Open Source Zone enters beta

Published by ugo on June 3, 2005 in opensource. 1 Comment

Sporting a new name and a new domain, The Open Source Zone (the website formerly known as Source.zone) is officially starting today its beta testing period.

Quoting from the home page:

The Open Source Zone’s aim is to create a storefront for access to Open Source projects. The storefront will have the same level of participation that users give back to Amazon or iTunes by providing their personal feedback in form of reviews, ratings, comments, developers who liked this project also liked this other one.

In the coming days, most of the work will consist of adding more content (which is sorely lacking) and fixing the (hopefully few) bugs that will pop up.

If you feel like contributing, the site is open in pure wiki style: no registration and no email confirmation. Just click on Add new project or contribute a review.

Open Source communities are not serious enough, says Villasante

Published by ugo on June 1, 2005 in opensource. 0 Comments

After Gosling, here’s another outsider who seems to have a strange opinion of Open Source communities:

IT giants accused of exploiting open source: ZDNet Australia: News: Software: “‘Open source communities need to take themselves seriously and realise they have contribution to themselves and society. From the moment they realise they are part of the evolution of society and try to influence it, we will be moving in the right direction,’ said Villasante.”

And again:

“Open source is a complete mess — many people do lots of different things. There’s total confusion today,” Villasante said.

What a load of crap! If there is one force that is trying hard to shape the IT landscape — and parts of society — today in ways that nobody could have foreseen only a few years ago, that’s Open Source. Not just Open Source software, but also “open-source-like” initiatives like Creative Commons, Wikipedia, podcasting, you name it.

If there’s a critique to be moved to OS developers, is that sometimes they take themselves too seriously and seem intent on conquering the world with their peculiar point of view.

As for “confusion”, we prefer to call it “freedom”.

This echoes what Gosling said some time ago and which I criticized here and here. To James’ credit, he now claims that he’s being misunderstood. So it might as well been that the ZDNet reporter misunderstood Villasante too.

Curiously, two out of three of the reports quoted here come from Australia. Can it be the case that the perspective from down under is a little bit reversed? ;)